


Of the Reverend Mr Giles and His Wife: The Night They Met

by ljs



Series: Of the Reverend Mr Giles and His Wife [3]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, regency au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-15
Updated: 2011-04-15
Packaged: 2017-10-18 02:58:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/184260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ljs/pseuds/ljs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It is a summer night, there in that well-tended green corner of 19th-century England, and Reverend Giles' thoughts turn to the night he met his wife.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of the Reverend Mr Giles and His Wife: The Night They Met

The shadows of a summer evening had lengthened into night, and the inhabitants of the Vicarage, there in that well-tended green corner of England called Sunnydale, had almost settled themselves to their repose. The servant Andrew was reading a work of sensational Gothick literature and imagining himself the hero in his quarters downstairs; the son and heir of the home, eleven-year-old David Giles, was in his bedchamber upstairs writing to his best friend at Harrow, a nabob's son who boasted the name of Tariq. Mrs Anya Giles had retired to bed moments earlier, and now the Reverend Mr Rupert Giles had closed his latest book-purchase and was climbing the stairs to join her.

In one hand he carried his wife's handkerchief, which she'd dropped on one of her usual fluttering passes in and out of his library. (Mr Giles could not, even if pressed, have told a questioner what his beloved Anya had been doing on these flutters. His wife was so very busy, and his newly received volume of occult history so very fascinating and yet wrong-headed and requiring notation for a scathing review, that he had observed the form of murmuring vague nothings whenever she tossed questions his way. Mrs Giles was well aware of this inattention, and would wreak vengeance on him some days later – but we are not concerned with said marital corrections at this moment.)

At this moment, climbing the stairs, he happened to put the handkerchief to his face, whereupon catching his wife's unique scent, he halted on the third step to the top, and breathed again, and remembered the first time he had caught that fragrance of roses and magic.

...............................................

The shadows of a spring evening had lengthened into night, there in that Mayfair street, and the Reverend Rupert Giles wished desperately to be home (not that he had one) and in bed (even if alone). Yet duty – or rather, espionage – called.

In fact Rupert Giles was on his last mission for a secretive department of the War Office, one not listed in any formal accounting of the intelligence services, one known only as the Council. He had spent the last five years ostensibly as a tutor and spiritual guide for young bucks travelling to Italy and Greece. While he had in fact shepherded some remarkably stupid boys through Florence, Rome, and Athens, he had been seriously engaged in chasing a particular person of interest through those storied lands and cleaning up the inevitable mess after one of their skirmishes.

It took a mage to catch a mage, or so was the Council's theory. And so it was that the Reverend Rupert Giles, who'd wished to renounce his magic after a youthful tragedy, had nevertheless been warring with his old school friend, the not-so-Honourable Ethan Rayne.

Mr Rayne had returned to England some months previously, however, and then disappeared. Mr Giles had used the most advanced scrying methods and not been able to discern his whereabouts until today. Mr Rayne, it seemed, was attending an evening party at the home of his favourite sister-in-law, a woman who had already invited Mr Giles to attend. (The daughter of the home was yet unattached, and Mrs Henry Rayne had hopes of the equally unattached, seemingly respectable clergyman.)

And so Mr Giles went up the steps to the house in Half Moon Street, expecting the worst in all ways. It was unreasonable, he believed, to think that the bloody slippery Ethan Rayne would consent to walk sweetly into custody. The result was likely to be one more sodding mess.

(Mr Giles, used as he was to scrambling through the seediest parts of Europe's most distinguished cities, had a mental vocabulary suited to those pursuits. He controlled it admirably in society, but lived in the fear that someday he would forget himself – or rather, reveal himself.)

Ceasing his fruitless pessimism, he knocked on the door. Upon being admitted, he took two steps inside and--

Roses and magic.

He blinked, and then took another deep breath. Yes, there it came again: a scent deep, sweet, yet with a pleasing edge.

“Oh, I beg your pardon,” said a woman in the shadows near the doorway. She then walked into the light, her smile brighter by far than any lamp. “I didn't mean to hide in that fashion. Or rather, I did mean to hide, because there is a gentleman whom I don't care to converse with, but I didn't mean to startle you.”

“Oh,” said Mr Giles. He felt dimly that this reply was less than impressive, but he couldn't help himself. The young woman was so...lovely. And slightly odd. And lovely. The sensations he felt upon seeing her slim person, large brown eyes, and enormous smile were unlike anything he'd felt since the tragic loss of his first love Jenny: in fact, he wanted to taste that smile as he took the young woman in his arms.... After telling himself rather firmly to behave like a gentleman, damnit, he said, “Er, yes. So sorry.”

“No, it is I who is sorry!” Mrs Henry Rayne carolled, as she burst into the hallway. “My dear Mr Giles, I was called away by another guest and so did not greet you properly. Come in, sir.”

Mr Giles managed the proper form of greeting, and then cast his gaze toward the young woman. Mrs Rayne sighed – for it was unlikely that Miss Griselda Rayne would catch a man's eye after this one, strange as she was – and then presented him. “Miss Anya Jenkins, Mr Rupert Giles. Mr Giles, this is Miss Jenkins.”

“Good evening!” Miss Jenkins said, and beamed. Mr Giles, she had seen at first glance, was not in the usual way of boring men at these evening parties: in addition to being pleasingly tall, with a fine solid figure and a ruggedly handsome face, he smelled of incense and citrus, and in his eyes she discerned sparks of intelligence and possibly something even more interesting.

Miss Anya Jenkins was herself not in the usual way of milk-and-water ingenues. Born of the cadet branch of an aristocratic family, she had nevertheless been cast adrift at age fourteen when her parents had died; before her ducal uncle Arthur could collect her, a certain Continental gentleman, one Mr D. Hoffryn, had claimed guardianship and spirited her and her small fortune across the Channel. For the following ten years – she sometimes felt it was like a thousand years – she had followed Mr Hoffryn and his daughter Hallie through dubious places no proper young lady should ever go. When her Uncle Arthur had found her at last (by accident) on a trip to Paris, he had opined that the first initial of Mr Hoffryn's name stood for Demon. Miss Jenkins did not correct him.

She had made her London comeout this Season and found herself heartily bored. Could not one man have a rational conversation and/or treat her as a thinking being, she often asked herself, and after posing this unhappy rhetorical question, she would plunge into her uncle's library and take up his copy of _The Wealth of Nations_ to soothe herself. Miss Jenkins, unlike most young misses, was fond of trade and horticulture.

“Good evening,” said Mr Giles, and then took her hand and bowed over it. The fragrance of roses and magic was stronger here; it came from her soft skin. (Miss Jenkins in fact blended her own creams, and yes, she placed a pinch of magic in each jar; she was not a proper mage, but she had her little spells for various occasions, as Mr Hoffryn and Hallie had taught her.)

Repressing a desire to lick Miss Jenkins' palm and then proceed to her breasts – as he silently chastised himself for being a goatish idiot – he returned to standing. The three of them stood in the hallway for a long moment, he gazing at Miss Jenkins, Miss Jenkins returning his gaze with full interest, and they might have stood there even longer, had not Mrs Rayne seen Griselda simpering at an ineligible suitor and propelled them all into the drawing room.

Miss Jenkins' hand had found its way to Mr Giles' arm, which distracted him for a moment with the warmth of her touch, and so it was with an additional shock that he looked up and saw not only Mr Rayne, half-hidden by a long stirring drape at one open window, but also Sir Quentin Travers, the Council member who had a living in his gift that had been promised to Mr Giles once his mission was complete. He wondered if there was more here than he'd first assumed.

At this point Miss Jenkins said meditatively, “Mr Rayne shouldn't be flashing around the Cardinal Ring like that, if he wishes his dark chaos spell to remain unnoticed.”

Mr Giles startled, for at first he had not espied the ornate ruby ring adorning Mr Rayne's little finger, which indeed amplified that chaos-mage's natural powers, and at second -- “The Cardinal Ring, Miss Jenkins?”

“Yes, it's a fifteenth-century relic from that one sorcerer-cardinal from Milan whose name I always forget. It carries a nasty set of magicks and is easily worth as much as I make a year from my canal investments,” she said briskly, and then, as her face fell, “Oh _dear_ , I'm not allowed to say things like that in public. I always forget that, too!”

Mr Giles found himself in the grip of warring emotions – enchantment at both her knowledge and honesty; annoyance at Mr Rayne's complete predictability in making Mr Giles' life difficult; discomfort at the sight of Sir Quentin Travers on his ponderous way toward him. (Sir Quentin might be the source of the respectable employment Mr Giles thought he craved as well as the disreputable jobs Mr Giles had thoroughly enjoyed, but he was, in Mr Giles' opinion, an ass.)

“Mr Giles,” Sir Quentin now said in a falsely genial and wholly condescending way, “how are you getting on? Not that you have ever _failed_ in a task, but--”

“My word, that man's a pig,” said Miss Jenkins in a voice she no doubt believed to be lowered.

It was at that moment that Mr Rupert Giles fell in love, whole-heartedly and irrevocably, with Miss Anya Jenkins.

Unfortunately, it was also at that moment that Mr Rayne blew Mr Giles a kiss and then disappeared through the open window. Mr Giles sighed.

“Are you going to pursue that chaos mage?” Miss Jenkins said. When Mr Giles looked at her, she smiled. “I just recognized that something special in your eyes, sir. But I won't tell anyone, as clearly you wish to appear respectable.”

Mr Giles brought Miss Jenkins' hand to his lips and tasted roses and magic for the first time. Then, as he straightened, “Yes, and thank you. But, er, may I call on you tomorrow?”

“Yes, please. I live in--”

“I'll find you,” said Mr Giles, “you may count on that.”

Sir Quentin said sharply, “Well, go _on_ , man, and stop goggling at this rude young woman.”

“There's a passage just past that urn, Rupert,” Miss Jenkins said, “it leads to a side door,” and pointed him in the right direction.

He gave her one last smile before disappearing into the night. And as he followed Ethan Rayne across the river into the stews of Southwark, as he tracked him to a den of a most unsavoury French sorcerer, and as he beat the stuffing out of said Rayne and then relieved him of the Cardinal Ring, three grimoires, and several secret War Office plans that Mr Rayne had planned to sell to unfriendly bidders, Mr Giles kept smiling at the memory of roses and magic.

.....................................................

Smiling now, the Reverend Mr Rupert Giles lowered his wife's handkerchief and then hurried up the remaining steps and down the hall to their bedchamber.

Anya, draped in a loose dressing-gown (his, in fact), sat at the open window, brushing her hair and looking out dreamily at the night. She made a romantic picture, although as Rupert would have guessed, she was in fact thinking about manuring her roses. When he paused in the doorway, however, she cast a bewitching glance over her shoulder.

“Are you ready for bed, my dearest Rupert?”

“Eventually,” he said. After shrugging off his coat, taking off his shoes, and putting these tidily away, he crossed to her. He put one hand on her shoulder, caressing the silk of the gown and the silk of her skin, and then dropped her handkerchief in her lap. “You left this in the study, Anya.”

“Oh, how careless of me,” she said, and then tipped her head to allow his questing fingers to journey up to tease her ear. Her voice grew husky. “You must be wishing to punish me for my thoughtlessness.”

With one hand, he pulled her to her feet; with the other, he captured her hairbrush and then gently hit her posterior with the flat of it. When she shivered happily at the blow, he turned her around in his arms and undid the tie at the dressing gown's waist. The delightfully shameless woman wore nothing underneath.

“Let us see if you consider it punishment,” he murmured, and kissed her deeply. When she was making soft little pleasure-sounds, he used the hairbrush again.

“Oh, _Rupert,_ ” she breathed, and she smiled at him just as she had the night he'd fallen in love.

“You are all roses and magic, my love,” he said, and then pushed her onto their bed.

The shadows of this summer evening had lengthened into night, indeed, yet the master and mistress of the Vicarage did not sleep for a good long time, engaged in their marital pleasures. But let us not tell anyone. The Vicar and his lady wife, after all, wished to appear respectable on the outside.


End file.
